Warren Mitofsky, RIP

I was sad to read that Warren Mitofsky died this week. An inventor of modern exit polling, whose system generated all the data on election nights, he was the last of a breed from a bygone era at CBS News, a brilliant and indispensible brain to Cronkite and Rather on election eves past. Generous, ornery and funny, a font of historical knowledge, he was good to reporters and contemptuous of corporate handlers. Pollster John Zogby called him a "grumpy old man." I liked him. In March 2004, I wrote a profile of Mitofsky for the New York Observer, which you can read here.